Almost to Lake SImcoe

   We have been on this canal for nine days now.  We’ve gone through 39 locks (they are numbered 41, but they eliminated two of them during remodelings over the years and didn’t renumber them) and Dan calculated we were lifted well over 600 feet.  We’ve docked at seawalls and we’ve anchored in the lakes.  We moved from sedimentary geology to granite.  The scenery has been spectacular, from marshy wetlands to narrow channels reminiscent of the Dismal Swamp (but with northern firs) to large man-made lakes dotted with small rocky islands.  When we left Katchewanooka (the correct spelling here) Lake, we passed through the two locks at Burleigh Falls and Lovesick and anchored in Deer Bay of Lower Buckhorn Lake for the night.  This was the night thunderstorms were supposed to roll through.  Though they did rumble around us, they only gave us about twenty minutes of passing rain.  

On Friday (July 7) we passed through Buckhorn lock (#31) and on through Bobcaygeon (lock #32) and tied off at the seawall there to stretch our legs and make a grocery run before moving on to anchor in Sturgeon Lake for the night.  With the weekend beginning and the small local boats about already taking advantage of the beautiful weather, we were hoping to find places to ourselves.  It seemed funny to realize that only the fisherman were anchoring - everyone else was partying at the seawalls around the locks.

Saturday we got to Fenelon Falls (lock #34 - #33 is on a side waterway from Sturgeon Lake to Lake Scugog) and again stopped for a stretch and a walk around.  We found a Canadian Tire and picked up a new water jug as well as a few other things, and made a second grocery store run, this time for a pint of ice cream for lunch and a few other things we’d not found yesterday.  The seawalls at Fenelon Falls fill up fast, and people hover hoping for an opening, so we moved on to give someone a slot.  As usual, we had no hard and fast plans.  We knew the Kirkfield hydraulic lift lock was ahead but we weren’t particularly in a hurry to get to it. Then we found out it’s been half-broken since last summer.  Only one side of the lift is operational, so it is unable to utilized the two halves as counterbalances to be able to lift boats on one side while lowering boats on the other as the Peterborough Lift Lock does.  Thus it takes an hour to slowly lift boats and about twenty minutes to slowly lower boats.  We decided to head right to the lift to either get through on Saturday or to be first in line for Sunday.  We left Fenelon Falls, traveled through Rosedale Lock (#35) across the shallow but pretty Balsam Lake and entered the narrowest part of this canal system we’ve encountered. 

At the entrance there is a sign asking boats to give a security call to warn other boaters of their passage.  Each side of this canal was lined with rocky ledges and the guidebook warns to stay in the middle and not stray.   In the middle of this canal a marshy section opens onto a small man-made lake filled with tree stumps. 

Deadheads are common in this part of the waterway, both from the flooding of forested land to make the waterway and from the logging operations that made use of the earliest versions of this canal system.  Needless to say, we took it all very seriously and traveled slowly.  

We arrived at the Kirkfield Lift Lock fully intending to stay the night.  We were the fifth of six boats.  While tied up, we talked with the couple in the boat behind us, people from Syracuse traveling on Remedy - who were members of the same yacht club in Henderson Harbor that my Aunt Thelma had presided over as the first female Commodore.  When I mentioned her name, they said “Not Thelma Schneider!”  Turns out they had been friends for years, both in Syracuse and Henderson Harbor.  Small world!

The same people who had told us about the current operations of this lock informed us that a large passenger cruise boat was headed this way to spend the night here and it would have priority over the first lockage in the morning.  We debated… go through this lock tonight as part of the last lockage or wait until mid to late morning for the next lockage available to us?  We decided to join the other vessels and lock down. 

Six of us in this lock made for very tight quarters, especially since the boats in the front of the lock wouldn’t move as far forward as possible.  We ended up being in the middle of the three on the starboard side, and fending off the bow of Remedy while allowing them to nose up over our swim platform and through our stern gate.  The locktenders bend over backwards to be nice to the boaters, but in cases like this one they should have been a little more in control of which boat was placed where and in what order.  Had the six of us been placed in a different order, we would have all fit in without anyone having to worry.  All six of us spent the night at the seawall below the lock, while the big cruise ship had the upper seawall all to itself.

This morning, (Sunday July 9) we left Kirkfield as soon as it began the operation of lowering that cruise ship.  We had a short run through five locks before reaching Lake Simcoe, the largest lake in Ontario.  We are locking down, now, but we won’t make up for the 600+ feet of lift - we only need to be at the same level of Lake Huron.  We reached the entrance to Lake Simcoe about 1:00 pm and decided, this being the weekend and all, to just stay here for the rest of today and tonight, and travel the lake in the morning, when the recreational traffic will be less.  It’s pretty and peaceful here.

Tommie asleep on helm watch…